


Forty

by bomberqueen17



Series: Meet Death Sitting [9]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Ciri just got here and is already done with their shit, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Missing Scene, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), background geralt/jaskier, ficcing while quarantined, geralt and eskel are giant children, wolf pack puppy feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23769433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: This is a missing scene from The Ancient Sea, the middle of chapter 2, just after this scene:“Lambert,” Eskel said, “Geralt wouldn’t even fuck that bard that wrote him the song, because he said the guy was too young, and he was like, twenty-five.”"He was eighteen," Geralt corrected, and then cleared his throat. “He’s forty now,” he added.Eskel caught a lot more out of that interjection than anyone else did, and turned to stare at Geralt, opening his mouth to comment on it, but Geralt ignored him and went on, instead, with the original conversation.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: Meet Death Sitting [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639717
Comments: 62
Kudos: 703





	Forty

“So he’s forty now,” Eskel said, and Geralt didn’t startle because he’d smelled that Eskel was or had been in this room, but it was a near thing; he really hadn’t been expecting Eskel to be standing _behind the door_ as it swung shut.

Geralt laughed instead. “Yes,” he said. “He’s forty now.”

“So,” Eskel said, stepping out into the room. “So? Did you? Come on!”

Geralt laughed again, and unfastened his coat, latching the door firmly and hanging his coat on the hook on the back of it. He went over and laid a fire in the grate and lit it, and Eskel had come and was sitting on one of the chairs near the fire watching him so intently he stopped and made a face at him. 

“Do you think I can’t light a fire?” he asked. 

“Are you asking me to do it instead?” Eskel responded, clearly just to be an ass. Geralt rolled his eyes at him and cast the _Igni_ to light the fire, and Eskel rolled his eyes at it and Geralt had to tackle him over the back of the chair, which had suffered such abuses before and held up to it just fine. They rolled across the floor, wrestling, and Geralt grabbed Eskel’s hand so he couldn’t cast his wicked terrible little _Yrden_ , and then twisted both his arms into a firm hold he knew Eskel wouldn’t be able to get out of, and after a little more struggling, Eskel said “Fine, fine, you win, _gods_ ,” and Geralt let him go and then kissed him, because that was the most fun thing he could think of, and Eskel let him for a little bit, and even got into it a bit, and then twisted his hips and upset them and pinned Geralt.

Geralt could break the hold but he knew if he did Eskel would _Yrden_ him, and that was so unpleasant it would entirely destroy the mood. So he just lay there, feeling the cold of the floor seeping through the fabric of his shirt, and ground his pelvis up against Eskel’s, trying to get him to lean down and keep making out, which would be fun. 

“Come on,” Eskel said. “Tell me the whole story.”

Just then the door to Ciri’s bedroom made a loud clacking sound as the door catch disengaged, and Eskel leapt to his feet before it had managed to swing open a narrow crack.

Geralt was still lying on the floor, and he rolled his eyes and made no attempt to get up. “It’s all right, Ciri,” he said, “Eskel was trying to beat me up but he didn’t succeed.”

The crack widened slightly, and a small face peered suspiciously out until Eskel was within her angle of view. “Why would he do that?” she asked. 

“Because he’s basically rotten,” Geralt said, sitting up onto his elbow. “Don’t worry, I won.”

“You don’t look like you won,” Ciri said doubtfully, and Eskel started laughing, laughing so hard he bent double. 

Geralt whipped to his feet and had yanked Eskel down and pinned him again before Eskel even stopped laughing. He lay on his back on the floor under Geralt, still laughing. “Never assume a fight is over,” Eskel said.

“Well,” Geralt said, “maybe it is now,” and that was when he realized that Eskel’s left hand was still mostly free, and just as the realization hit him, so did just enough of an _Aard_ that he flew backward approximately his own bodylength and slammed quite hard into the wall. “Fuck,” he wheezed.

“I want to learn how to do those,” Ciri said, her voice gone thin with pure envy. 

“You should go to bed, child,” Eskel said. “Your old man needs the time to recover.”

“Just don’t hurt him any more,” Ciri said, with a roll of her eyes, and then shut the door, and Eskel fell about laughing again, but Geralt could see he had his hand ready to _Aard_ him again, and decided he was done playing. That last contact with the wall had been unpleasant. 

He righted the chair, and sat in it himself. “Well,” he said, “if that was what you came here for, then I guess you’ll be going now?”

Eskel came over and climbed into Geralt’s lap, straddling him, which was perhaps a vulnerable position to put himself into but he also clamped his hands onto the arm of the chair, and Geralt would have a devil of a time dislodging him if they decided to keep wrestling. And anyway, his weight was so comfortable and heavy and pleasant and he smelled so good, Geralt was pretty sure he didn’t want to, so he put his hands on Eskel’s waist instead and gave him a heated look from under his eyebrows. 

“Tell me about the bard,” Eskel said. “Did you finally fuck him?”

Geralt looked Eskel up and down speculatively. He’d missed him, terribly. “No,” he said. “Well, it depends on what you mean by that.”

“Ah,” Eskel said, settling his weight a little, mouth curling with satisfaction. “Give me the details, then, and I’ll form my judgement on it.”

Geralt sighed. “I don’t have to tell you _everything_ I do,” he said. “What about you? Did you have any fun these last couple of years?” Sometimes he and Eskel told each other stories about the other people they’d fucked, and got off together talking about it, and that was always, always pleasant. Eskel didn’t seem to get around quite as much as Geralt did, but when he did the stories were usually fantastic.

“No,” Eskel said. “We’re not changing the subject. I don’t have a bard who writes songs about me and dangles around with me and whose mouth I lovingly ladle porridge into during plagues and such, about whom I’ve been a fool for literal decades and have insisted repeatedly that I couldn’t possibly fuck. You’re telling me the punchline to the story now, Geralt.”

“I’ve never lovingly ladled porridge into his mouth,” Geralt said. (It had been soup, and _lovingly_ was such a subjective descriptor as to be useless. _Tolerantly_ , maybe. _Dutifully_.)

“And he in return takes you on lavish vacations to resorts and feeds you sweets,” Eskel said, caressing Geralt’s face with a sweet gentleness they generally didn’t bother with for each other. “Bathes you and rubs lotions into your asscheeks. Writes odes about you. You’re practically married, Geralt, you’ve been wooing each other so long. So did you fuck him or not?”

Geralt sucked on his lower lip a moment, mostly to watch Eskel watching him do it, and rolled his hips up a little. “Do you remember,” he said, making his voice go low and husky, “when we were still kind of kids, how I’d go climb into your bed sometimes?”

“Yeah,” Eskel said, also hoarse, watching Geralt’s face very intently indeed. 

“The kind of stuff we’d get up to,” Geralt went on. 

“Handjobs,” Eskel said. “Mostly. As I recall.”

“And between the thighs,” Geralt said. 

“Oh fuck,” Eskel said, “yeah, I remember that.” It wasn’t something they usually bothered with anymore. 

“I was so full of poisons,” Geralt said, “I figured I couldn’t risk, y’know, spilling. On him. So I got him to fuck my thighs from behind.” He’d dropped his voice to be too quiet for Ciri to hear even if she were pressed up against her door, which he didn’t think she would be. 

“Mm,” Eskel said. “We haven’t tried that one in a long time.”

Geralt shrugged. “I know,” he said, “but I also wouldn’t have to worry about poisoning you.”

“I can’t belive you didn’t have any White Honey,” Eskel said, and he was mostly keeping it under wraps but Geralt could tell he was upset again, thinking about how stupid Geralt had been, probably. _Eskel thought you were dead_ , Vesemir had said. 

“Come here,” Geralt said, and Eskel glowered at him for a moment but then let Geralt tug him down to kiss him again. They made out for a little while, until Eskel pulled away and sat up again, breathing a little hard but apparently intent on getting his questions answered.

“So that was it?” he asked. “Just the one schoolboy rub-off? After twenty years of noble self-denial, that’s all you did?”

Geralt blinked up at him. He was pretty turned-on now, pleasantly aroused by Eskel’s familiar weight and scent and the practiced slide of his tongue. They’d learned their bodies’ responses by practicing on each other, had formed most of their ideas of how desire worked in one another’s arms. “Well,” Geralt said. “There wasn’t much privacy. I did suck his cock once too.”

“Why?” Eskel asked. Geralt raised both eyebrows. Eskel glowered at him. “I mean, in general, why be so resolute against him for twenty years and then suddenly go for it?”

“He asked me the same thing,” Geralt mused. He didn’t really want to investigate it in detail, he wanted to get off with Eskel, one way or another; they hadn’t had any kind of reunion, really, and he’d missed him, for years. 

But he also knew he couldn’t lie to Eskel or give him a brush-off. Eskel knew him too well, too thoroughly. It was to the point where sometimes Geralt forgot he and Eskel were two whole separate people, sometimes forgot Eskel couldn’t remember things that only Geralt had seen, that it didn’t work like that. Having sex with Eskel wasn’t like having sex with anyone else; it was like an infinitely better type of masturbation, that didn’t have any of the attendant loneliness but also didn’t require much by way of communication. 

“Well?” Eskel asked, tipping his head to one side to give Geralt a very skeptical look. “Just ran out of willpower?”

“Sort of,” Geralt admitted. “It was-- I almost died, and I just--” How could he admit that he felt like Ciri was his destiny and he shouldn’t expect a long life span past when she stopped needing him? “Everything’s different, and also, well. I knew he could walk away if he really wanted, and wouldn’t just go along with whatever I wanted just for the hell of it. He’s got more common sense now, finally.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, Eskel.” But it was true, everything was different. 

At the very least, he wasn’t going to be spending years out on the Path anymore. Not for the next… five, or seven, or however many years it took to get Ciri to a point where she was an adult and could choose her own way. 

“I guess everything _is_ different,” Eskel said. “No more spending years out on the Path for you, brother. I’ll mind your kid for one season, but not three running, we’d starve.”

“I wouldn’t--” Geralt said, meaning to protest that he’d had that same thought, but he couldn’t think how to say it and also was so full of some unnameable emotion about how matter-of-factly Eskel had just co-adopted his daughter that he couldn’t really come up with any words at all. “I’d,” he tried again, but it was no good. Instead he grabbed Eskel by the back of the neck and hauled him down to kiss him again, suddenly desperate. 

“C’mon,” he said, after a short, increasingly-intense couple of moments, “bed,” and Eskel sat up and laughed, breathing hard.

“You’ve just got this way with words,” he said.

“Like you’re any better,” Geralt said, and stood up with Eskel in his arms, his hands locked under Eskel’s heavy ass. It only worked because Eskel didn’t resist, but let Geralt carry him over to the bed and throw him down.

“What if the kid wakes up again?” Eskel asked, looking up at him with his eyebrows raised in challenge.

“She’ll get an education then,” Geralt said, but he paused to put out the lights with a couple of quick and precise _Aards_. Nothing to be done about the light from the fire, but also, that meant it was plenty bright enough in here for a pair of Witchers. 

Eskel wriggled out of most of his clothing, and Geralt did the same before he climbed into the bed. “You gonna make sweet love to me the way you didn’t get to with your bard?” Eskel asked.

“No,” Geralt said, “I don’t really need to pretend you’re anybody else.” 

After that they didn’t talk anymore, really, which was more their style; Eskel bared his throat and rolled over to show his belly, asking without words, so Geralt gave him what he was so clearly asking for, hard and thorough and sweet, sweetly coaxing, and Eskel shattered silently for him, coming undone under him and around him in a torrent of quiet broken gasps. 

Geralt kissed him, kissed his ruined-and-remade face, kissed his bared throat, and finally came in him, shaking apart and coalescing again in the safe place between his thighs and on his broad chest, cradled in strong arms and a slow heartbeat and a body whose responses he knew as well as his own. 

Home. 

“I’ve got you,” Eskel murmured, as Geralt involuntarily made a little sound as he came down from it. Eskel’s fingers stroked through Geralt’s hair, working down through it to find his scalp, and then his broad callused palm settled around the back of Geralt’s neck. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

Geralt sighed, settling his head into the crook of Eskel’s shoulder. He’d broken a sweat and smelled awful, but it was overlaid with Eskel’s scent and the smell of sex, and in that context it wasn’t bad at all. He breathed it for a little while, in no hurry, but eventually mastered himself and sat up, collecting a shirt from his dirty laundry pile (tomorrow would be busy) to clean them both up with.

Eskel sat up too, and caught him by the jaw to kiss him. They weren’t big kissers most of the time, but an evening like this, well. It had been years, and here he was, and here they were, and he wasn’t alone. 

“You know what you’re doing with all this?” Eskel asked, gesturing toward Ciri’s bedroom door with his head. 

“No,” Geralt confessed. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Eskel said. “Vesemir’s excited to have a youngling here. We all are, even Lambert. It’ll be good, Geralt. We’ll figure it out with you. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Geralt said, and kissed him again. 

“And we’ll figure out a way to get you a chance to finally fuck that bard,” Eskel said.

“Get out,” Geralt said, laughing, and Eskel dodged his swipe and got up and put his clothes back on. 

“I know what’s important,” Eskel said, a bit smugly. He leaned over and kissed Geralt’s forehead like a parent or a brother or something, and smoothed his hair down and looked at him for a minute, but then he left without saying anything else, because they weren’t really that big on talking, after all. 

Geralt slept like a baby in his own bed that smelled like Eskel, and woke better-rested than he had in a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah my fic writing has slowed way down while i'm in self-isolation purgatory. i mean, i'm happy to be here, but i'm also attempting to teach arithmetic and reading to a kindergartner and first-grader and not only am i not a teacher i'm not even a parent so this is a lot for me.  
> oh my god i'm so mad about how little sense english makes, the kindergartner asked me in despair why there are two L's in "hill" and i had to admit that I don't know, there isn't a reason, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry! And why does the "u" in "busy" make an "i" sound??? I don't know, kid! It's not fair! I'm sorry!  
> sorry.  
> (ha and their dad was exposed to the virus at work a week ago and was just notified about it and he's not worried because he treats every patient as if they're potentially positive but that is still not super reassuring)  
> we're fine though! we're fine! we're all super super super fine. it will be fine. are you all fine? i'm fine. i hope you are all fine.


End file.
